GamerGaters attack study on video game losers lashing out at women … by lashing out at women

So the #GamerGaters are mad about a new study that suggests that some of the most dickishly misogynistic male gamers are quite literally losers. That is, men playing video games like Halo and Call of Duty online tend to lash out at women players when they’re doing their worst.

Looking at the behavior of a number of men and women over the course of 163 games of Halo 3, researchers Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff from the University of New South Wales and Miami University found that

lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behaved submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario. This difference in gender-directed behaviour became more extreme with poorer focal-player performance.

In other words, the more of a video game loser they were, the more of a misogynistic loser they became.

We suggest that low-status males increase female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status as a consequence of hierarchical reconfiguration resulting from the entrance of a woman into the competitive arena.

In other words, they hate losing … to a girl.

The researchers argue that the entrance of larger numbers of women into the dude-heavy world of video games is especially threatening to “[l]ow-status and low-performing males,” who

have the most to lose as a consequence of the hierarchical reconfiguration due to the entry of a competitive woman. As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.

If this all sounds to you like a plausible explanation for a lot of the anger driving #GamerGaters, you’re not the only one to see the connection.

[a]s gaming has traditionally been a male-dominated pastime, these findings could go some way to explain 2014′s Gamergate furore. Several high profile female game developers were targeted with a torrent of misogynistic abuse, including rape and death threats, coordinated by factions of male gamers using sites like 4Chan and Reddit.

Evidently forgetting that the study in question was conducted by two men, a Redditor called Katastic_Voyage won more than 130 upvotes with a lovely rant declaring that

There’s a huge freaking difference between shit talking, and bullying.

But most of these articles and “papers” are written by women, who live in a woman’s world, and don’t understand the first thing about what it’s really like to be a man. The others are by men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it–they were likely forced to grow up in a woman dominated, catty, passive-aggressive world.

Ok, my bad. The researchers might appear to be men, but are probably “men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it.”

And somehow this all has something to do with metal music:

Woman call all men “dumb” because that’s what they call anything they don’t understand. It’d be like someone who likes classical music calling metal dumb. Even if they’re actually related. Even though there’s plenty of beauty and complexity in metal… they don’t ever dive into it so they deride and dismiss it.

It IS real music, mom! (Sound of bedroom door slamming, followed by the muffled intro to “Enter Sandman.”)

So they take things like:

The need to compete? They think it’s violence.

The need to shit talk? They think it’s bullying.

The fact that men can look at other women and not cheat? It blows their minds that men can actually feel pleasure just seeing a woman of beauty… and that’s it.

Uh, I thought we were talking about video games. Did some mean lady just break up with you?

It’s what happens when a bunch of women get into male spaces and some fail to understand it.

Gaming has always been competitive. I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I was called various names and derogatory remarks, but it doesn’t fucking matter. You get insulted all the time, and it takes a special type of person to actually take offense to that. …

It’s not that we hate women. With gaming being a predominantly male hobby, it’s going to have elements of masculinity, competitiveness, and testosterone floating about. When people shit talk, they will use any sort of “weakness” that you have and attack it. If you’re unskilled, you’re a noob/scrub. If you’re an obvious underaged child, you get called a kid. If someone needs a quick all-purpose insult, you’re now a faggot.

When some women see this, they immediately think that it needs to change to fit their worldview. To them, these insults are simply unacceptable, and are “x-phobic” or whatever tumblr buzzword they feel like using today. Never mind the fact that gaming was born from a bunch of socially awkward men who carved out their own space with their own culture and lingo. No, now you have to cater to ME, because I’m a GIRL.

Boy, you guys really put those dumb lady researchers (who aren’t ladies, but who maybe sort of really are) in their place.

I bumped into someone called Lanariel briefly whilst logging out – whomever you are, I look forward to playing with you in future!

The fields are looking really good. The people who’ve been farming have done an amazing job.

Construction work on Mammoth Hall continues; I hope to finish the roof over the great hall within the week. Please feel welcome to use the beds there at night. As it grows there will be more dedicated spaces which people can fill with whatever equipment we need.

If you want to change this go have a discussion about it outside of here. Tell people why it happened and warn them of the dangers ignoring it will lead to. In the end it will have to have a basic understanding amount society before you can expect the media to cover it properly.

So instead of siting here and saying Damm it’s so disappointing that CNN is just focusing on this one aspect go and have a conversation with someone who will listen and speed your veiws.

Others have already called out your assumption that nobody here does any activism outside this site. So, now, riddle me this: so what if someone of us don’t? Who appointed you the arbiter of how to feminism? Who appointed you the arbiter of what people who aren’t you do with their time, effort and money? What information do you imagine yourself to be in possession of that tells you whether meatspace activism is feasible for anyone here? Speaking for myself, there are exactly 0 people with whom I have face to face contact who aren’t either right wing nincompoops or militantly apathetic about politics. I have no drivers’ license and I have severe anxiety issues. Engaging in conversation about this stuff on the internet is about the extent of what I can do. So that’s what I do. I’m so terribly sorry (not really) that it’s not good enough for you.

OK I’m not sure if I’ll be able to join the rest of you on the minecraft server .I gave the mods a try in a singe player game and things were really laggy and choppy. Is there any thing I can try to improve performance?

Besides turning settings down, you can reinstall the pack but with “FastCraft” installed as an optional client-side pack. That might help a bit. I’d also hope that playing on a multiplayer server would be a bit less laggy since most of the computation is being done on the server, but who knows.

Since there’s only a handful of us, we can also discuss which mods we want and try to find a lighter mod pack that encompasses the mods we want or make one ourselves. Like, for instance, not having that Gaia monster mod that I’ve heard so much about. u3u

Specifically, I did 1, 2, 3 (though I later undid this step, and things still ran smoothly), 12, 19, and 24.

OK I tried a few of those and I’m getting better performance. still not 100% but I think Ican at least play. My new problem is I have no idea what these mods do. I was on the server tonight for a bit and was afraid to touch any thing out of fear of accidentally flooding the place with lava or something.

@Fabe: I’mma tell you what I told Belladonna: No one comes out fully knowing everything about Minecraft. Kirby and I are always here if you have questions, and if we can’t answer them, we’ll help you find the answer, okay? 😀

The server is there for all of us to have fun, not to worry! Even if you do end up flooding something with lava, that’s reversible. :3

Also, I had a little nook in our little cave shelter, and if you need a place to put stuff, you’re more than welcome to it, since I moved into my new house/bar.

The needswants of the many are that we want a Pandapool to play with us. We will be sad if we don’t get one.

More broadly, especially if we eventually migrate this from kirby’s machine to a hosted paid-for service with continuous uptime, I would like to keep it accessible to as many people as possible, even those with low-end computers. I am not a GamerGater; I don’t want an aristocracy of those able to afford good hardware getting better treatment.

I wish I could join in, but my shitty duct tape Frankenstein of a computer can’t even run the Steam client anymore, much less Minecraft. I tried playing a Flash game the other day and it overheated so badly it melted the charger (I am not kidding).

I don’t want an aristocracy of those able to afford good hardware getting better treatment.

Falconer would be a very sad and lonely Falconer indeed if, in his limited playing time, there were maybe only two or three other players when there could be a dozen or more. I logged in for some lunch break MineCraft (Lunch Craft?) but there wasn’t anyone around.

I admit, all the mods were kind of overwhelming to me. Literally so, when I found myself having to punch a giant minotaur’s hit points down a point at a time. Although his constant stream of pained, devilish “moo”s was amusing.

Srsly I think AT Launcher said I was running like 200+ mods? And I didn’t get to play at all yesterday because we had Fun and there was too much of it and we all collapsed in a heap when we got home.

@sn0rkmaiden: We’re not playing through Steam, it’s just useful for coordination. For now, we’re using the AT Launcher for the mods. I found it just by googling AT Launcher. We’re using the Resonant Rise modpack. I can get you the server address or help you set up if you need it.

Part of the study was that the losers were talking shit to women and NOT men, they weren’t complaining about shit talking in a ‘male space’. So no, he hasn’t experienced shit talk like these women have, and he missed the entire point of the study.

A weak and disparaging coup from an ill versed voice restirring old hat.
There is no scientific data, no testing groups, back contrast, there is only assertation and assumption. A gamerhate strawman if I ever saw one. Pull the other leg, it has bells on it.

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